Beat
by browntape
Summary: formerly 'somebody else's map'. Medical marvels, a set of twins with two hearts...EACH and a superhuman knack with a screwdriver. The doctor 18 years on...still roaming the universe and the centurys. Will the two collide? possibly reunion fic, eventually
1. Chapter 1

The inside of my mothers uterus must have been highly tense and exciting

The inside of my mothers uterus must have been highly tense and exciting.

My birth…the end of my gestation period in fact, was like a bad made for TV movie. Touching, if you like that sort of thing I suppose.

I never have been one to sit still and let the world pass bye. Nine months of floating in a foetal position clearly hadn't appealed to me…I was likely attempting gymnastics, or an early escape. And to cut a long story short I got rather tangled up (of course I don't remember all this…it's just what I am told).

Had it been just me in there I would have been royally fucked, so it was lucky that my mothers over zealous ovaries had landed her with two buns in the oven. The fact that my brother's arm was tucked securely between my neck and the umbilical chord, his elbow crooked, his hand resting against my chin, made us taking the usual exit a rather unfeasible prospect for us however, so we endured a Mcduff esque entrance in to the world.

The next chapter in the book of our wacky medical adventures is even weirder. Being twins and being impatient we were a few weeks early…a bit small and blue and fragile, so we were incubated and poked and prodded…subjected to scrupulous testing and checking and retesting, much to our mothers chagrin….

She isn't one for hospitals.

She had planned for us to be born in the medical wing of the Torchwood institute; the Scientific research company run by our grandfather, but there had been trouble at the institue. Some kind of terrorist attack, or an accident with a particle accelerator. It's never been properly explained to us, but the utilisation of torchwoods resources was not an option at the time of our birth because…well…torchwood's resources were on the charred side.

We were two days old when the doctors began whispering around our Perspex boxes. We were moved to isolation and eventually the maverick doctor who had snapped up our case upon hearing about the developments cracked open our little chests for 'investigative surgery'.

Mother was apparently doped up to the eyeballs at this point. There was no way maverick doctor was going to have anyone object to his poking around inside us. We could make his career.

To cut a long story short, a week after we emerged in to this world of scalpels and medical one upmanship, maverick doctor (who apparently also had a maverick bedside manner, and so was discouraged from interacting with patients whilst they were still conscious) sent a nurse to change Miss Tyler's drip to one with less tranquiliser and more saline, and a few hours later to enlighten her as to maverick doctor's discoveries.

She had, she was afraid, some rather shocking news.

There was a problem with her children's hearts.

They had more than their fair share.

Mrs Tyler, clearly not one for hysterics, simply looked at the nurse for a few moments before replying

"I wouldn't view that as a problem, nurse. Surely two hearts are better than one?".

This exchange has become family legend, and the telling of the final line always results in raws of sherry soaked laughter around the table at Christmas, because clearly still delirious from her impromptu sedation Miss Tyler proceeded to lose focus slightly, frown at the nurse and mutter

"besides….what else could I have expected?".

Before dropping back in to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The inside of my mothers uterus must have been highly tense and exciting

Sometimes, I think I can feel the anatomical extra in my chest flutter. But surely that is only fancy?

It has never had a beat.

When we were little, we used to try and 'make them go', John and I. Screwing up our might, and our little faces and fists, and concentrating on the extra muscle in our chests. When one of us got scared, the other would ask 'can I feel? Did it start it?'.

Once, after watching a particularly dramatic episode of casualty Mum found John prepping my chest for a pair of defibrillator paddles fashioned from the filaments of the toaster….And she got this look. She looked hurt, and full of joy all at once. And about a billion miles away. But just for a moment, before she flicked the plug socket to 'off' and seized the paddles.

"bloody hell, John. I thought you two had given me all them tools back?"

She drops her Gs and forgets her grammar when she is angry, and when she is excited. Or upset. Or when she's had a few too many baileys.

Needless to say, we never succeeded in jump starting the extra hearts. At one point we went through a bit of a 'save the whales' phase, tried to dupe Mum in to signing our excess organs over to medical science, but the woman raised us from babes. She is a tricky one to dupe. Besides I suspect the attempt was somewhat half hearted…

Neither of us have ever been too fond of needles, and we've managed to successfully avoid any hospital stays since our rude entrance in to the world. Although we did wear our angry, red twin scars as a badge of pride when we were younger. Oozing, bleeding and minor deformation earns cool points in a state primary schools playground. Being a twin earns cool points as well, and clocking up all those points early was important for us, as a propensity toward learning…and a to be quite frank, an inexplicable mathematical brilliance tend to win a child few friends.

WNDHKAFKBAKAJHDFAHDKA

A dark haired woman hopped up and down in a panic as her lanky, suited companion jiggled a key in the door of the blue police box they were standing beside.

She sounded short of breath, and her cheeks were a bright almost comical pink.

"Hurry UP!...Lord of all time and you can't handle a bloody yale lock."

She shot daggers at his back.

The key turned, the doctor shot in to the Tardis, followed by the woman, almost tripping over him in her haste and slamming the door, the doctor thought, unnecessarily hard behind her.

She brushed herself down, in an attempt to remove the odd purplish tendrils of alien weed attached to her fleece jacket… The attempt was rather futile, especially as it turned out the tendrils stuck not only to fleece but to most things. Including human skin.

"well." He strode in to his ship "it wasn't me who introduced the concept of fire to a completely undeveloped race"

He turned around, eyebrows raised, and noticed the state of his companion.

"ah yes"

the doctor indulged in a Cheshire cat grin.

"rather sticky weeds on teflakon one. Sorry. I had a spray somewhere…."

He was on his hands and knees now on the metal grating that made up the floor of the central control room of his Tardis.

"breaks down the chemicals in the weeds, they bond loosely with whatever they touch you see"…

He pulled up a piece of grating, aided by the sonic device in his left hand.

"Very interesting really….no glue…complicated chemistry…well, not for me obviously, but for the teflaks…enterprising people, they'll harness it in a few years…well a few centurys"

he drew out the 'e' in 'well', made a face at his companion

"so not THAT enterprising obviously, but they do wonderful things wi…AH"

He cut himself off in mid sentence. The cry was triumphant.

Throughout his monologue he had been riffling through a cardboard box he had pulled noisily out from the bowels of the ship.

He held up a can in his left hand.

A bright green can, chipped and dented and covered in cobwebs.

"Spiders live in the Tardis?"

The dark haired woman took the can, which the doctor had proffered towards her.

"Brilliant. spiders travelling through space and time"..

She smiled gave the can a shake

"and you keep your stuff in a cardboard box?"

The doctor, having replaced both the box and the panel, stood up.

"oh yes. Brilliant things cardboard boxes.

Close your eyes when you spray that, or you'll be seeing double for days"


	3. Chapter 3

The inside of my mothers uterus must have been highly tense and exciting

We used to take family holidays to all sorts of exotic locations.

Mum liked to travel…she said if she had to be confined to 197, 060, 800 square miles of earth she wanted to see it all.

And we saw a fair bit.

And John and I enjoyed every minute of it. We were the kind of endearing, but hellish care for children who wanted to touch everything. Climb everything. Ask everyone we met every one of the myriad questions produced by our overactive imaginations.

But we had an uncanny capacity for new knowledge.

We could both speak several languages by the time we were 12 and put in to French classes at the grammar school we had just begun attending.

Having undertaken no formal lessons in anything but English, we took our French GCSE's that year…Using them as an excuse to gently persuade mum that a trip to France was necessary to hone our conversational skills.

Ofcourse our mother was perfectly aware that the trip was completely surplus to requirements as far as passing the GCSE's was concerned.

She agreed anyway, after only a token show of resistance; it was when we were in strange and remote corners of the earth that our Mum was happiest.

Now and then, Gazing out over barren dessert or breathing the thin air at the summit of a mountain she would get that same far away look she had displayed when she had snatched the toaster paddles out of John's hands.

And though she looked infinitely broken, at the same time she emanated a profound joy which was notably absent most of the time.

Not that she wasn't okay…mostly. She was almost always okay.

But sometimes we would disturb her in a quite moment and when she turned to us, her eyes would be red and her face streaked with tears.

Of course, as the old adage goes, time heals all wounds.

As we got older nights during which we heard her sobbing through the bedroom wall grew less frequent. She spent less time gazing in to nothing. Smiles not directed at us, however, did not frequently reach her eyes.

We asked about our dad…of course we did.

We were periodically obsessed. He was a cowboy, or a farmer, or a wizard…an explorer…a spaceman.

We got a little older and it dawned on us that he was more likely a dead man.

I don't think mum could have talked about him even if she had wanted to…The look that engulfed her features when we asked the first time had scared the both of us enough to halt the questioning for good.

Nan, normally not one to let anyone else-even John or I, who were blessed with similar powers of chatter- get a word in edgeways shut up and averted her gaze when we asked about daddy.

"good" was all she said "good in the end"

and of course we dwelt on the comment for weeks. Theorising madly as to what she had meant. In the end however, she gave us nothing remotely concrete.

WDKJGDSFGIYDGFKJ

"No, I meant it"

the doctor's dark haired companion shook her head.

"all of time…the entire universe…It's wonderful and everything, but"…

she shifted uncomfortably, sighed, looked down at the grubby grill beneath her feet.

"But I don't have forever doctor. I don't have forever to do the things people do…and call me boring…call me close minded, but I want to do them.

I want to be home enough to have a dog…I want a meaningful relationship with another human being…I want, believe it or not, a crack at some kind of career….although what I'll achieve with a degree in philosophy I have no idea…I"…

She trailed off…her word well run dry, looking expectantly at the downcast face of the man in front of her.

The face of her doctor. Because she had come to think of him like that, as they all did eventually.

Lord of all time, and charming to boot.

How could a humble human not be in some way fascinated…enchanted by him.

Especially when he had ripped the blinkers from their eyes, as he inevitabbly did for all who travelled with him

He showed them the wonders of the universe, and when they had drunk their fill they tottered back out in to their worlds, enriched and ever so slightly drunk on the world they knew was out there.

Probably living twice as hard because of the knowledge.

And the doctor's face broke in to a characteristic grin.

"well" he drew out the vowel, withdrew his hands from his suit pockets "if you're sure you aren't up for one more teensy-weensy little trip".

He raised his eyebrows, maintaining a smile

"because there's a festival right here in about…oOoo" he made a show of checking his watch "three thousand years. Brilliant firework display..well, I say fireworks, but no gunpowder of course, not here. Insects actually. Millions of little"…

He trailed off. Silenced for once, mid-flow by his companion's expression

"all-righty then"

he strode to the mushroom of a console in the middle of the room. Pulled his glasses back down out of his unruly mop and began stabbing at the ship's controls In what would seem to the untrained eye a rather erratic manner.


End file.
